The Unexpected Resistance - A Belgian AAR

A third AAR by me. I really need to slow down.

I have about 80 screenshots, so I highly doubt it will take more than two weeks at most to go through. Should be fun though

El Pip said:

An already completed gameplay AAR, I've heard of playing ahead but this takes it one step further.

Not sure what to say, presumably it must have been interesting or you wouldn't be bothering to post it. I await with interest.

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Well it should be reasonably interesting at the least. I hope haha

Took me half a day to go through, but I had nothing else to do.

Avindian said:

I don't know if I've ever seen a Belgian AAR before; good luck!

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Thanks
I haven't seen many Belgian AARs myself. perhaps I might go and do a bit of a resistance game afterwards, if this gains enough popularity, I still have the save file and my airforce, but idk yet haha.

Part I: Preparing for War

The defensive lines that I created were reflective of my expectations of the German attack. The German side should be easy to hold, but the Netherlands region is where the danger lay. I created two armies to defend the respective regions, in two defensive lines.



And a little look at the situation:



As you can see, my IC is not as high as I would have liked it to be. There was an armoured car brigade in production, something I thought to be rather odd. I added a few other things to that.

I also set trade to manual, the first time I have probably ever done it, and I came across straight away a lot of trades for metal. It seemed the Belgians in Africa really were getting some resources.



I could buy some supplies with this money, giving me more IC to do useful things.

And by Feburary, a couple of things happened - I lowered my neutrality, and I realised my units were not being produced with high enough experience. Always a bad thing.



I was soon able to get some better IC laws.



Here's a quick look at my army.



As you can see, I have those two armies set up already. The airforce is tiny, one CAS (they don't have it researched so how they have one produced is beyond my knowledge), and one interceptor. I decided to go with an interceptor-heavy airforce, the German airforce would be too strong to bomb them strongly.

I soon came across what looked to be my Achilles heel - manpower. Belgium needed a lot of manpower to mobilise.



That doesn't sound like a lot, does it? Well, consider the current manpower and it's gaining rate, and you will quickly see the issue I was faced with.



I instead started production on light tanks. They cost a lot of IC and cost relatively little manpower. This would stop my factories from being wasted, and from losing too much manpower. If I become in desperate need of manpower, those infantry divisions can be disbanded easily to give me more. Infantry is too cheap for Belgium. I was going to produce planes, as they are exceptionally light on manpower, but I wanted a mobile corps anyway, so I decided to produce a few light tank divisions first.



It really depended on the manpower - if better laws could not raise the gain rate sufficiently, I was going to suffer a lot.

Baltasar said:

Why light tanks? Why not support brigades for you infantry? Even if you had to disband some infantry brigades, it'd mean that their staying power would be much improved. From the looks of your MP pool, Belgium will not be able to keep fighting long anyway :-/

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Had no support brigades researched at the time :\

Yes, and with all the exp forces they will receive from FRA and possibly ENG the reinforcement cost will be staggering. I would definitely try to enhance INF divisions with support brigades. Most likely consider INF-INF-AT-AT and focus on AT techs. Have a small, well trained army with a punch. Having said that, I 've failed in all my Netherlands attempts, and I can only win against Axis with the Scandinavian nations just by barricading Copenhagen and watching the massacre. Btw, INTs will be very important.

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I probably should have gone AT. I've never played a minor defensively before, out of the at least 30 games I've played in HoI3. haha, thanks for the advice (a bit late for it unfortunately but if I play anther minor I will definitely do so.)
And yeah, I pretty much neglected bombers for ints.

1te jagers te paard? First pdox: it's 1ste jagers te paard. Second, te paard is, cavalry.

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What is PI playing at here

Wow, you sank quite a lot of manpower to the production queue already. But since you're already past that, I'll spare you the expertise of my own

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To be entirely honest, I actually sort of wanted to be manpower-debted. In a weird way. It limits the sort of units you can create, so you create units out of necessity and not for the sheer point of a bigger army.

Though I won't make excuses. I probably should have just gotten ints, but I really did need something more. I wanted one more corps to properly defend against Luxembourg's eventual invasion, but I wasn't willing to build one from the infantry I had.

I am awful at minors and you've seen that in the first update haha. I should rename this 'how to not play Belgium well'

Part II: More Preparations

I finally got some reasonable manpower laws, letting my gain rate significantly rise. Also, note the lack of units in Verviers. I kept all forces back behind rivers as I am not going to stand a chance in the open.



Which gave me a manpower gain rate of:



Even that really isn't a lot of manpower, so I managed to find a minister who gave a manpower bonus.



Also, there was an election, and I found it very surprising that it was not a liberal party but in fact a communist (I think) party. How interesting.



I also decided on a line to hold should my initial line falter - using rivers and forts where I can, of course. Hopefully using this line will give France ample time to come to my help.



My first light armour division was finished, so I decided to create a quick response corps, to respond to any issues that my forces could not deal with. It would be much nicer if my whole army were mobile but I'll just have to do with a single corps.



Finally, I finished a few air techs. This will hopefully give my planes an even chance against the Luftwaffe, if I continually upgrade them.

Ikarases said:

Oh my god, it happened...

People's Republic of Belgium! Join the Comintern and break the game!

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Shame I've already completed all the playing

Germany DoWs me.
I am comintern.
SU joins the war against Germany
Germany fights a two front war and gets smashed.
France invades Belgium while the SU is preoccupied with Germany
the SU and the Allies are now facing each other, 6 years before they did IRL. Cold war before they get away from triplanes.

If somebody else doesn't take that idea I am 100% doing that. because that would be the best thing.

Part III: War Begins

Let's just get straight to the war, shall we? I really didn't want to show much of the rest of the stuff that was going on. I have cut straight to the good stuff. Starting with a wonderful new interceptor.



Italy proceeded to join the Axis, and I suddenly realised: I should be mobilising.



I was several months away from getting all the manpower I needed, but it probably didn't really matter at this point anyway. The invasion would be too short for attrition to become a deciding factor.



The war began just as it always did, with Germany invading Poland on the 1st of September. Without Germany's 'revenge' combat modifier, I wondered how quickly Germany would take Poland. Most of my games involve about 2-3 weeks, less than half the time it did historically.



Nothing particularly special happened: Poland didn't make any breakthroughs and Germany just pushed to Warsaw like always. Poland surrendered about 5 weeks after the initial DoW - far closer to reality.



I was getting particularly annoyed at Luxembourg - they had nothing to defend themselves with. That little garrison in Euskirchen was about to turn into an army or two of German soldiers ready to invade.



But then something rather interesting happened: France invaded Germany.



I was tempted here to just join the Allies and help France, but unfortunately the German forces came quickly to stop the French before I could make my decision.



(That screenshot is when I switched to France to see how viable it would be to join them against Germany. I decided against helping them - they were getting pushed back and soon they'd be attacking me. I didn't have a lot of troops to spare unfortunately. Plus many of my interceptors had not yet come off the factories, so I'd be powerless to stop and invasion).

Part IV: Warmongers

I finally mobilised, realising war was only a few months away at most.



The French border was back to its original position - the Germans had gotten from Poland back to France.



England had come to France's help, supplying several divisions.



And then the big day finally came. DoW time.



Apparently Germany already was at war with the Netherlands. The Allies and Axis were now about to fight a huge war - and Belgium would be right in the centre.



Germany took Verviers from us.



It had begun.

most of my screenshots are concentrated in the next few months and I wanted to get all this stuff out the way haha. here we go

Part V: Strong Resistance

My quick response corps got into action, ready to protect Belgium and France from the fallen Luxembourg.



France appeared to be very concerned with me or the Netherlands, and immediately sent most of their men to the front in the north.



The Germans began to attack me in Arlon.



However, I managed to secure a victory thanks to the French divisions stationed there. I quickly counter-attacked.



My airforce wasn't doing too well though. All my interceptors (stacking penalties, I know, I immediately forced some of the planes out of the battle after I saw this) couldn't hold back the German bombers.



The Germans had now brought in tanks.



But good news in Luxembourg - we had won!


we can't have casualties like that forever though

A determined German counterattack left the forces in Luxembourg severely disorganised, however, upon their retreat.